Ok so I have been using this machine for a few hours now, still see no sense or use for the Metro tile thing, but the desk top once you find where everything is to manage the machine its not so bad and definitely much faster than the vista that was previously on the machine, as an aside the machine is about 4yrs old, mobo crapped out about 6months ago and I replaced it with an Gigabyte A6 based one, then it seems someone tried to load something that screwed a registry entry , so I sorted that and the owner asked if I could put W8 on it, so here we are.

Anyway, I have googled around and not found a way to bypass the tiles and live totally in the desktop, any ideas.

I've so far resisted the urge to try any of these and I'm actually used to the new start screen experience now. It's encouraged me to learn more keyboard shortcuts and pin my frequently used apps then start them with windows key + 0-9 (which I had started doing with win 7 anyway)

I actually like the ideaof live tiles but yeah, the windows 8 start experience on the desktop is a bit disjointed.

I have gone back to windows 7. I actually like Windows 8 idea. I know I could have put another file explorer on but why should i. I like Windows 7 where I open the folder and at the bottom it showed how many files there were. Made it handy checking whether I synced my ebooks properly. Windows 8 I had to click on proerties to find out. My canon windows driver disk wouldnt work with Windows 8. On windows 8 to scan a file on my multifunction, I had to go to all apps then devices and printers. My printer was shown twice. I had to right click on the 2nd one and select scan. On torrent downloads when choose delete file it wouldnt delete it out of download folder but actually make a duplicate copy.On websites each session it says no internet connection and it would go through the diagnostics and say no problems. Close and then website opens. Just a lot of small niggles which will be sorted later but for now I prefer Windows 7 overall. So yeah you can do stuff with Windows 8 but more reliable on Windows 7

You can move them, group them with names, delete them, all you can't do is change the text and color. beat that in W7, where you have cascading folders of stuff thats hard to find and you have to pin the most used programs to the front.

I have more tiles off screen and can just scroll through them when i need. As its a work machine I don't have any live tiles (proxy blocking it) but at home I have my email and other tiles showing current information

Its just the window start button in a better manner. You access it by pressing the windows button, and if a program wants to run full screen you can click on the spanner and make it move to desktop.

I only see the start page when I am looking for a program, its just windows 7 otherwise.

I think in some ways Windows 8 is ahead of it's time. I think the Metro interface is great for tablets and small devices. It work a lot better with a touch screen and where you are happy with one app at a time.

On my phone and tablet, I am happy with this. When I want to properly multi task, I jump on a PC. For me, Windows 8 was counter productive in this regard. I'm sticking with Windows 7.

I want a task bar, and multiple windows open that I can run on one of at least two screens with ease. Drag and resize windows, move them between screens etc. Windows 8 makes productivity harder.

ajobbins: I want a task bar, and multiple windows open that I can run on one of at least two screens with ease. Drag and resize windows, move them between screens etc. Windows 8 makes productivity harder.

You're just doing it wrong. When you run a program that wants to take the full screen such as the crappy IE10 click the spanner and set it as Show on desktop. Then it appears on the desktop with a re sizable window. At present I have 3 programs running on my machine all in their own custom sized windows, exactly like Win 7 does.

I don't use the win 8 default programs that want the full screen, just use others like adobe reader, or your own graphics software for images etc, its really no difference to win 7, its just a learning curve.